Engine City by Ken MacLeod Page B

argument somewhere, but I can’t put my finger on it.”
    “Hah!” said Esias. “It’s true, unlikely events happen, and that argument can’t rule them out—merely show that unlikely is what they are. But at an intuitive level, some such reasoning must account for my subjective lack of panic about Volkov’s, ah, ‘monkey-spiders.’ And everybody else’s, I shouldn’t wonder. Including yours, respected Number-seven daughter.”
    Lydia let her eyes almost close. “You have something in mind for me to do,” she said.
    “Yes,” Esias said, sitting up. “Show lots of enthusiastic interest in what Volkov is up to.” He raised his eyebrows. “If, that is, you can still stand his company?”
    “Oh, yes,” said Lydia. “I can that.”

    Peter Ennius had left. Julia de Zama tracked his departure with a cynical eye.
    “Off to make a report,” she said.
    “You mean—”
    “Of course. There’s always somebody, isn’t there?”
    Volkov agreed that there was always somebody. “A useful man to have on the inside,” he said.
    “Exactly,” said Julia. She waved a hand, and fresh drinks were placed in front of them.
    “So,” she said, “it’s just us.”
    “Indeed,” said Volkov. He chinked his glass against hers. “Long life!”
    She repeated the toast. “You know,” she said, “that’s a much more interesting prospect than alien invasion.”
    “I know,” said Volkov. “I intend to make much of it.”
    “A good idea, but not exactly what I had in mind. I have a strong personal interest in it myself.”
    “You’re a bit young to concern yourself with that.”
    She gave him a severe look. “You need not flatter me.”
    Volkov raised his eyebrows. “No flattery was intended, but”—he smiled—“if you say so, I must take your word against the evidence of my eyes.”
    She flushed slightly. “The light is kind, if you are not.”
    He smiled again, over the rim of his glass. “I expect progress in that area within, oh, ten years, even if half the Academy has to die of old age first.”
    “Progress,” said Julia. “If you only knew how hard it is to find someone who understands the meaning of progress.”
    Mother of God, he thought, if you only knew.
    “Tell me about the Modern Society,” he said.

    Lydia joined them, without pretense that it wasn’t deliberate, about halfway through the afternoon.
    “I’ve been looking over some of the Modern Society’s ideas in the papers,” she explained, after introductions.
    “Your father sent you,” said Volkov.
    Several empty beer glasses had accumulated on the table; Lydia knew him better than to assume this meant he was drunk. Julia de Zama, on the other hand, looked as if her self-control was less secure. She was sitting back in a louche manner, one arm draped along the back of the seat behind Volkov, and she was giving Lydia a fiercely territorial stare.
    “Of course he did,” Lydia said, primly arranging her skirts. “He’s interested in what you’re doing. But that doesn’t mean I’m not interested in it myself. This is my city you’re messing with.”
    On reflection, she could have put it better than that. But there was something about Volkov that had always impelled her to be blunt. He seemed to like it. Julia de Zama didn’t. She leaned, or maybe (Lydia thought uncharitably) swayed forward and aimed a forefinger.
    “It’s not your city,” she said. “The presumption that it is is half our problem. You people—the Traders—bring changes with every ship, and blithely depart before they take effect, yet always expect the city to be much the same when they return.”
    Lydia could see the justice of this—it was after all what she herself had said earlier, but expressed in a hostile tone.
    “That’s not a problem,” she said. “It’s a solution. We give the city stability without stagnation, progress without destruction.”
    “No you don’t,” said de Zama. “You give it muddle and waste and cross-purposes, and evade both consequence and responsibility. And I’ll tell you something else. We don’t need you. We don’t need the